


rechauffement

by jehoney



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Arson, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Violent Thoughts, explaining the whole 'jug tried to burn down the school' thing, jug is scared of his own intrusive thoughts, literally sleeping together, self doubt, set directly after ch7, wow another jug pov fic from me how original
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 06:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10328645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehoney/pseuds/jehoney
Summary: Somewhere he can hear himself, between intakes of breath, muttering panicky words, the same four words (“I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t”) so childish and pleading coupled with the tears, into Archie’s chest and Archie’s saying “I know, I know you didn’t” just like Betty did, when neither of them have any way of knowing at all, just a twisted, misplaced faith in him that’s going to get them hurt.he didn't do it. he didn't burn the school down. he didn't kill jason.but when enough people tell you something about yourself, you start to believe it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> henlo it is i, who enjoys causing jughead angst and sadness
> 
> this takes place literally the night ch7 ends, straight after the sheriff basically accuses jug of killing good ol' jason
> 
> cw for lots of violent description in jug's head with some stuff on self mutilation etc (thanks to Afterlife With Archie for the zombie jug trope that i shamelessly use as a metaphor in this)
> 
> (((also i'm a big ol' jarchie slut but this could be queerplatonic ? or the beginnings of my fave throuple betty/archie/jug u never know)))
> 
> enjoy !

_Jughead Jones is cold._

_Not like a cool evening breeze, a lack of heat that makes his heartbeat slow, dangerously slow. He wants to cut into his wrists with blunted dirty nails and see if he bleeds black, or blue like some lifeless thing deprived of oxygen._

_He wants to feel how long he can last with only the air in his lungs, fingers clamped around his oesophagus, he wants to burrow into Archie’s warm, red heat like a reptile, like the parasite he is, because Archie will bleed ruddy crimson and pulsing, not dilute paint thinner that he can feel eroding his capillaries, and he wants to hurt himself, hurt Archie, hurt everyone, he wants to not feel the damp chill that’s soaked through his skin and rests in the core of his skeleton, poisoning him from the inside out, because Jughead’s cold, and he’s never known how to feel anything else, he’s freezing and congealing and the cold has frozen him like rigor mortis._

_He’s tried to get rid of it, he’s tried to feel warm, burning the hairs off his arms with matches and now he’s ten years old again and the bathroom stall at the elementary school, toilet paper curling searingly in between his fingers and even when the charring touches him he doesn’t drop it, letting the paper fall apart around the pinch of thumb and index because the raw redness of his fingertips is warmth and hurt and real and proof his nerve endings exist. He does it with a whole roll, but the flames aren’t big enough to be red white hot and his jaw clenches because in ten-year-old brains warmth is red and orange and Archie’s hair because Archie is the warmest thing he’s ever touched, been burnt by touching._

_But he lights up the whole roll and he doesn’t notice that his eyes are streaming and his lungs are filled with smoke until the alarm starts hammering, tongues of heat licking up the walls but it’s too late because the stall is burning undamaged and intact, and Jughead is as cold as he ever was at the heart of the blaze because something in his core is frozen, and dead and even when his flesh is burning the flames turn heatless and that indeterminable extreme of frost almost indistinguishable from fire. He doesn’t need to rip himself open because he’s falling apart right here, and sure enough his veins are dark and slow-moving, no pulsing but a nauseating clot of something too poisoned to be blood and he watches them curl up in the cold fire, detachedly, until the walls are gone suddenly and there’s a figure stood before him in some subconscious messiah echo, arms low, and outstretched._

_And as the flames throw Archie into the light, Jughead can feel everything. The agonising tearing of his skin dropping off bone, and he’s burning up, screaming silenced by the choking smoke but the panic grabbing at every inch of him, flaying him as he’s pinned down by Archie’s freezing eyes. Except now they’re Jason’s eyes, and a weeping crater has opened in his skull, and the hands are reaching to pull and tear and harm and--_

“Jughead!”

Consciousness scares him almost as much as his fabricated corpse inferno, and gasping breaths rip through him as he jolts awake, lurching upward, the air mattress protesting at the sudden change in weight distribution.

“Jug? Jesus fuck, man.”

It’s Archie, because it’s always Archie, but he’s not burning anymore, and he certainly hasn’t been psycho-spliced with a certain dead football captain, and he’s definitely not the stuff of nightmares: he’s wearing a Yoshi shirt, for Christ’s sakes. He’s backed down to the foot of Jug’s makeshift bed, Jug figures in reaction to his own violent awakening, so as not to get headbutted, and a wary uncertainty still flickers in his eyes as he crouches, earnestly, worriedly.

He’d expected his breathing to slow by now, because Jesus, Jughead, get your shit together, but instead he still feels a little (a lot) like he’s drowning, and brings his palms up to cover his face like maybe if he’s in the dark his lungs will start working properly again. He’s wrong. And before he’s really realised the gasps have twisted themselves into sobs, and his face is wet, and he falls forward like he’s made of lead into Archie.

Somewhere he can hear himself, between intakes of breath, muttering panicky words, the same four words (“I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t”) so childish and pleading coupled with the tears, into Archie’s chest and Archie’s saying “I know, I know you didn’t” just like Betty did, when neither of them have any way of knowing at all, just a twisted, misplaced faith in him that’s going to get them hurt. But he’s freezing, and Archie radiates in the dark room, rubbing circles into his back like Jughead’s a toddler; he needs some babying right now, so he soaks it up, vulnerable and raw.

“M’so cold,” the words mix with the dampness of his breath in the crook of Archie’s neck, and despite the tactile solidness of arms holding him he still can’t stop shivering like he’s got hypothermia, ragged and harsh. He’s only really half aware of what he’s saying, but Archie hears, and pulls away slightly to look at his face.

“You wanna come up?”

And Jughead thinks that much is pretty obvious, but nods nonetheless, standing as Archie lies down first, and then slipping in, the warmth of the redhead’s chest pressed against his back. In all the times they’ve done this, the claustrophobia of being trapped between Archie and the wall has always made him panicky, so he instead stares out into the deep blue monochrome of the bedroom, and makes the shadows into things they aren’t: black, mangled things, with bullet holes and bloated limbs.

It’s not like he’s afraid of the dark – he never had a problem wandering aimlessly around the vacant emptiness of Riverdale High in the middle of the night – but, after the accusations of the day before (or still today? Who can tell), there’s a lurching in him that at least one person thinks he’s capable of murder. And he’s been so soft, lately, so uncharacteristically malleable, by how he feels for Betty, by the slow, gradual rebuilding of whatever he has with Archie, that other people’s views of him have sunken deep into his skin, into the shadows of the room and he’s letting them get to him in a way that’s new, and frightening.

Because what if he did do it? What if, amongst the trauma and shock, he’s patched over his memory and these nightmares are his subconscious bleeding through the stitches, Jason’s face in his head reminding him of what he’s forgotten he’s done.

And the fire, he remembers, when he really did light up the toilet paper, sheet after sheet, and the stall never burned but he remembers wondering just how long it would take for the whole elementary school to blaze to the ground, and how many people would be able to get out in time. Disturbing, detached, intrusive thoughts, that pierced at him in the months he spent in the detention centre, that he learned to crush down deep in his gut, so they don’t terrify him quite as much. Archie’s the only person he ever told them to, who in response, confided that he once killed a rat with a baseball bat in the yard, and Jug wasn’t sure if it’s on the same level as burning down a school, but Archie’s always had a miraculous way of making him seem not quite as screwed up and lonely as he feels.

He’s doing it now, just by breathing, slow and even into the messy nest of Jug’s hair, but the coldness in his stomach keeps leaping up like reverse heartburn, and the thoughts are back, and suddenly the shadow ballet of the dark furniture makes a half-conscious picture of the gun in his hand, and Jason, again, alive this time, but the blown out back of his skull pouring red onto the carpet.

It’s not a memory, Jug has to tell himself, (and he’s whispering his affirmation of innocence again, like a mantra, “I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it”) because in memories guns don’t spontaneously ignite in your grip, and corpses’ lips can’t move when they’ve got a crater in their head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fucking terrifying, so he turns away from the too-wide too-cold emptiness of the room, and into the closeness of Archie’s collarbone.

“Hey..,”

Jughead was almost certain he was asleep, before he remembers he’s not the only one who’s been hard to read lately. Besides, it can’t be easy trying to sleep in the same bed as a nervous wreck like him.

“Sorry.” He mumbles, and feels a hand come up to rest on his bicep, warm and comforting, thawing him through.

“You’re tense as anything, Juggie. Wanna talk about it?”

The sentiment is dampened by the sleep that slurs his words, but Jug knows from experience that if he starts this avalanche now, he won’t be able to stop talking until they’re both on the brink of exhaustion, so he shakes his head. In fairness, he probably should talk his intrusive, violent imaginings through with someone, and the first person his brain throws up after Archie is Betty, because they’re the ones that are almost-probably dating, (despite Archie being the one he’s currently spooning with) but she needs everything other than a twisted-up mess of a boyfriend right now, what with Polly and everything, so confiding his true, Norman Bates nature in her is not a solution. The next option, which he belatedly realises probably should’ve been his first, is with a therapist, but that’s almost as terrifying as spectre-Jason, so he pushes the thought of confessing aside, and lets Archie’s arm drape across his body.

It’s harder to see dead people in the close fibres of the redhead’s shirt, and he uses Archie’s breathing as a template for his own, in, out, still ragged, but slower, deeper, warmer.

And his core seems to melt, slightly, as he drifts for the millionth time out of consciousness, his lips forming around words that are too impossibly quiet for Archie to hear, but somehow, he does.

Jughead whispers, “I didn’t do it.”

And the response is so certain, that it almost convinces him.

“I know.”


End file.
